


the things we couldn't kill

by apinchofcyanide



Series: the devil trying to hold me down [3]
Category: Batman: Arkham - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Sadism, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 20:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15251649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apinchofcyanide/pseuds/apinchofcyanide
Summary: In the middle of the night, there’s a knock on Slade’s door.





	the things we couldn't kill

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime after _Arkham Knight: Genesis_.
> 
> Thank you all for indulging me, it means a lot. <3
> 
>  
> 
> **Please be sure to read the note at the end.**

 

 

There’s a sickening crunch as the cartilage in Jason’s nose shatters beneath Slade’s hand.

He stumbles back, momentarily dazed, and Slade takes the opportunity to swipe his feet out from under him. Halfway to the ground Jason realizes what happened, and he barely catches himself, scraping his palms on the concrete. There’s blood freely flowing from his destroyed nose. He gasps for breath, managing to roll away at the last minute from a well-aimed boot.

Slade stalks forward. Jason, he knows, is better than this. _Slade_ has trained him to be better than this.

This _thing_ , the thing they don’t talk about in the light of day, has become a nightly ritual for them now. Slade has come to expect the phone call in the dead of night. Sometimes it’s the bunker. Other times, like tonight, it’s wherever Jason fled to first, trying to outrun his ghosts.

In training Jason is practiced, methodical. Here in the dark, he comes unhinged. Slade allows it, allows him to slay whatever demons are keeping him awake. When it becomes boring, or when, like now, Jason has exhausted himself to the point that he begins making rookie mistakes, Slade finishes it.

Jason throws himself at Slade, a last-ditch attempt to gain the upper hand, and Slade takes him to the concrete for his trouble. The impact with the alley floor steals the breath from his lungs, and all the fight seems to drain from his body at once. He goes limp beneath Slade. His cheeks are flushed, his breaths heavy and wet.

Slade thinks this is the part that Jason needs— _wants_ —the most.

Suddenly Jason seems more present than he has all evening, all the frenzy gone out of him, his ghosts momentarily laid to rest. “You fucking asshole,” he says, pressing bruised fingers gingerly to his nose.

Slade laughs. “It will heal,” he says, patting Jason’s unbranded cheek. He isn’t sure how Jason would react to him touching the scarred _J_ , isn’t sure he wants to find out. “Too bad it’ll ruin that pretty face.”

Jason freezes beneath him, and Slade realizes too late that it was the wrong thing to say. Jason has never spoken of his time with the Joker, but having spent a little time around the psycho clown himself, Slade can only imagine what it must have been like for Jason.

“Get off me,” says Jason, voice detached, and Slade swears under his breath but does as the kid asks, rolling away from him and rising to his feet in a fluid motion. Jason takes his time, sitting upright before carefully standing.

He’s used to Jason’s disappearing act by now—usually, after Slade’s given him what he wants, there’s no reason to stick around—but it’s never been like this. Jason leaves without a word, refusing to look Slade in the eye as he flees, the same hunted look about him that he usually has when this thing _starts_ , not when it ends.

“Fuck,” Slade says to the empty alley. If he were a better man, he would go after Jason.

 _If_ he were a better man.

–

“Venezuela,” Slade repeats flatly. The constant _click…click…click…_ of Scarecrow’s needle-points on the table is beginning to irritate him. “And who’s going to fund this little expedition?”

“Money will not be an issue.” Scarecrow’s ragged breathing rattles the apparatus of his mask. “I need you there—to help our young Knight.”

Slade knows what he should say: that he has far more important things to do than be the bat-brat’s babysitter. That it would take a lot more than what the kid had siphoned out of Bruce Wayne’s bank account for him to take off to Venezuela to play drill sergeant. He watches Scarecrow from the shadows, and says nothing.

The rattle intensifies—a laugh, Slade realizes, mildly disgusted. “I thought that might sway you,” Scarecrow says. “Your emotional response to the boy has not escaped my attention. I wonder what it is that makes him so special.”

What makes him special can be measured in dollar signs, nothing more, yet Slade can’t bring himself to say that out loud. It’s the principle, he reasons. He doesn’t owe Scarecrow anything.

Scarecrow takes his silence as some sort of acknowledgement. “Perhaps he reminds you of someone,” he muses. “Someone you’ve lost.”

Slade pulls on his mask. He’s heard enough. “You should stick to your day job, Crane,” he says. “You’re a lousy psychiatrist.”

–

Four hours from Gotham to an abandoned airstrip a few miles outside of Caracas, and then another two by jeep into the wilderness. It’s getting dark by the time they reach the old military installation Scarecrow procured for them. Others have already started to arrive. Mercenaries. Ex-military. All the dregs of the international underworld. All candidates for Scarecrow’s army.

Slade runs into a few names he recognizes almost immediately—a pair of hardened former SEALs, and Dixon, an ex-Army Ranger with a dishonorable discharge. He’s had run-ins with all three. The SEALs are all right; professional, which he appreciates. Dixon, on the other hand, he’d kill for a dollar.

“Slade Wilson, as I live-an-breathe,” Dixon says as he approaches, ignoring Slade’s silent command to keep his fucking hillbilly mouth shut. “I shoulda known—this operation’s got your name all over it.”

 _Moron_ , Slade thinks. He can feel Jason hovering behind him, having become hyper-aware of the kid’s physical presence over the last few months, and he steps aside, in a clear show of deference. Scarecrow had made it very clear the kid was to be in charge here.

Dixon looks from Slade to Jason, and Slade sees it—the exact moment Dixon’s eyes find the branded _J_ in the fading light. There are all kinds of rumors about the boy bearing the Clown Prince’s mark, none of them pleasant. “You mean we’re supposed to be taking orders from Joker’s bi—”

Slade’s hand is already on his sword when the gunshot rings out. Dixon falls at his feet, missing the back of his head. “Anyone else?” Jason’s voice carries easily over the now-silent yard.

As he watches Jason step calmly over Dixon’s corpse, Slade feels something stirring within his chest. It might be pride, if he cared enough to analyze it.

–

In the middle of the night, there’s a knock on Slade’s door.

He isn’t surprised to see Jason standing in the hallway, arms crossed over his bare chest, sullen. Like he’d rather be anywhere else than standing in front of Slade in the Venezuelan heat, silently begging to be let in.

Slade moves aside, gestures for Jason to enter. “Can’t sleep?” he asks, smirking. The only answer he gets is a glare.

He’s ready for it when Jason comes at him. A part of him is _always_ ready, anticipation of the fight and of getting to lay his hands on Jason curling together into some desire he won’t let himself recognize.

( _You’ve elevated emotional ignorance to an art form_ , Billy had told him once, but he’d sounded almost affectionate when he’d said it. _Arsehole_.)

Jason is practically dead on his feet—from the jet lag, or from so many sleepless nights finally catching up to him. It’s easy to take him down, dodging his initial run and catching him by the wrists, spinning him down onto the dirty, lumpy mattress. Slade follows the momentum down, pins him there, straddling the backs of his thighs. “This isn’t happening here,” he says sternly, gazing down at the single eye glaring up at him from where Jason’s turned his head. “You want to destroy a room, go back across the hall.”

Jason bucks up, tries to unseat him, but Slade holds him easily. “It’s like you’re not even trying to get free,” he says, and Jason screws his eyes shut, turning his face into the mattress. His hips buck again, and Slade realizes that he _isn’t_ trying to get free, not at all.

He starts to pull away, and Jason’s eyes fly open in something that might be panic. He twists his hand in a way that cannot be comfortable, fingers latching onto Slade’s wrist.

“ _Please_ ,” he says, and Slade can tell by the way the word catches in his throat it’s a word Jason doesn’t say often. “I need—”

Slade knows what he needs, has known since that first night when he met Jason in the bunker, the kid skittish and paranoid, like his nightmares could follow him into the world of the living. It seems pointless, now, to continue lying to himself about what it is that Jason gets out of this thing. Why he allows Slade to bloody and bruise him night after night.

Without warning, he rears back and lets his hand crack like a whip against the swell of Jason’s ass.

Jason jolts, and he turns his face into the mattress again, biting his lip against a satisfied moan.

“That’s it,” Slade says, the words barely more than a rumble in his chest. “That’s what you need, isn’t it?”

Jason shudders, a full-body tremor that Slade can feel as it travels down his spine. Underneath Slade, he rolls his hips against the mattress. “Again,” he says.

Slade slaps him again, harder this time, hard enough that he loosens a strangled cry of pain from Jason’s throat.

“Be quiet,” Slade says, idly rubbing his hand against the area he just hit, too much pressure to truly be soothing. “Do you want them to _know_ what I’m doing to you in here? Do you want them to know the rumors about their new leader are _true_? I don’t think you do.” He punctuates that last sentence with another slap, and while Jason gasps, he does manage not to yell out.

Slade has the sudden urge to see the evidence of his handiwork, and so he grabs the waistband of Jason’s sweatpants and pulls them down, exposing him to the room and eliciting another shuddering breath from Jason. He hasn’t been gentle, and the red, inflamed skin of Jason’s ass cheek proves it.

Staring down at Jason, Slade feels the first stirrings of—something.

“It looks like I’ve been remiss,” he says, and unleashes three quick, hard slaps to the other cheek.

Jason is panting against the mattress now, mouth open. Slade rubs his hand across Jason’s cheek, mockingly soothing, and then three more slaps—left, right, left. He can feel Jason’s feet kicking up behind him even as he continues to roll his hips, seeking friction.

“I wonder,” he says idly, kneading Jason’s cheek roughly this time before he smacks it. “Who do you imagine is doing this to you? Is it me? Or is it _him_?”

They both know it isn’t the Joker he’s talking about.

Jason gasps, and he throws a glare at Slade over his shoulder. Slade smirks, and then gives ten quick, painful slaps. By the end of it Jason is no longer glaring; his eyes are squeezed shut, tears leaking from the corners.

It’s the realization that Jason is crying that does Slade in. He’s always had a sadistic streak, and seeing Jason in pain, crying and squirming beneath him, is enough make him forget himself. He leans forward, and he knows Jason can feel that he’s hard in the way Jason pauses.

“I thought—” Jason takes a deep, wet breath, tries to untangle his thoughts. “I thought you were straight.”

“I am,” Slade says, unconcerned as he gives Jason another lazy slap. “I’ve been all over the world, kid. You think there haven’t been other pretty boys like you? A body is just a body in the dark.”

It’s a risk, calling Jason _pretty_ , after the way he’d reacted last time. But Slade is very good at calculating risks, and it pays off now in the way Jason trembles, teetering on the edge. Slade leans down until he’s almost flush against Jason, rubbing his cock in its cotton cage against Jason’s bare ass. “I’m not going to fuck you,” he says against Jason’s ear. “I’m going to make you come just like this, from the pain and the knowledge that _he_ would have never done this for you. He never would have given you what you needed from him.”

Jason is sobbing as Slade sits back up, clutching both of Jason’s ass cheeks in his hands, kneading the raw skin, hot to the touch. The slaps come quickly, then, hard enough and fast enough that even Slade can feel the strain in his muscles as Jason comes undone beneath him, too far gone to care now if the whole damn complex hears him.

“That’s it, let go for me,” Slade coaxes, running a hand up and down Jason’s spine even as he hits him again. “You’re doing so well, Jason.”

Jason freezes. Then his hips buck once, violently, as he comes on Slade’s sheets.

Slade slides off Jason more carefully than he would want to admit. Jason lays there for a moment, looking dazed, before he pushes himself off the bed. Slade watches as he pulls his pants up, hissing as the cotton drags against his skin. “Are you all right?” Slade asks, surprising himself. Jason is surprised, too, if his sharp look is any indication. It seems to have brought him back into himself a little; he still doesn’t seem _fine_ , but he’s not so far away anymore.

“I—” he starts, pauses, takes a deep breath that rattles a little from where he’d been crying. “Thank you,” he says.

Slade nods. He’s still hard, but Jason either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. He pads softly to Slade’s door without another word, and disappears into the dark hall.

If Slade were a better man, he wouldn’t leave Jason alone when he’s obviously coming down. If Slade were a better man, he wouldn’t lean against the wall and slip his hand beneath his waistband, wrapping a hand around himself as he relives the memory of Jason trembling beneath him, how hot Jason’s skin had felt beneath his hands, how sweetly he had cried.

But Slade isn’t a better man, and when he comes, he pictures Jason, bruised and bloody beneath him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. If this story/premise seems familiar to you, it's because you might have read it before. I'm reposting my fic, all of which was taken down by AO3 a few weeks ago. It's fine, I'm totally over it. (Narrator: She wasn't.) I'm gutted that all of your lovely comments and kudos from the first time around were deleted. If you want to read this story again and comment or leave kudos, you're the best, and I love you. If you're reading this for the first time and you enjoy it, you're also the best, and I love you.


End file.
